


Call Me Stephanie

by Anonymous



Category: Captain America (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Bisexual Steve Rogers, Bisexuality, Gender Identity, Transgender, Transgender Steve Rogers
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-08-30
Updated: 2015-10-14
Packaged: 2018-04-18 03:57:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,287
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4691162
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Diane Sawyer joins Steve Rogers at his home in Stark Tower for an exclusive interview.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is transcribed/derived from Diane Sawyer's interview with Bruce Jenner before he transitioned to Caitlyn. (Using the male name/pronouns for Caitlyn only in reference to the interview, because they were used there.) Voiceovers from Diane Sawyer are in bold text. Regular text are questions from Diane Sawyer during the interview. Steve Rogers’ responses are in italics. I think you can figure out the brackets.
> 
>  **Update:** It has been politely and correctly brought to my attention that while it's great for authors to include trans characters in their fics, it's not great for cis authors to try to write about the experiences of being trans and transitioning, just like it's not appropriate for cis actors to play the parts of trans characters, so this fic will not be updated any further. If you're an author that would like to take this project over, please let me know!

[studio shot, Diane Sawyer standing in front of a picture of Steve Rogers. Rogers’ hair is much longer than the military-style cut he sported when he saved New York, now held back in a ponytail. Instead of the familiar tight t-shirt he is wearing a loose blue button-down shirt.]

**Good evening. We’re so glad you’re with us for the Steve Rogers interview tonight. I don’t know about you, but we’ve observed a kind of generational divide defined by how you recognize his name. For some, he’s the man who emerged from nowhere to save us from alien invaders. For others, he’s the face on war bonds. But for the next two hours, Steve Rogers is going to tell you something else about his life, and we think it’s a story that can only be told by someone who lived it.**

[cut to a scene filmed from a moving car, a street view, buildings and pedestrians]

**We are heading to Stark Tower, where the Avengers have taken up residence again, in the aftermath of the Superhero Registration, Act, after what is now being referred to as the Civil War, to meet with someone we have watched for more than a year, a white hot vortex of questions, speculations, jokes and ridicule.**

[cut to quick scene of late night comedians making Steve Rogers references]

[cut back to driving view]

**All of us wondering what was happening to Steve Rogers, the superhero celebrity, and the man who once embodied the spirit of American patriotism during World War II.**

[cut to brief war publicity clip]

**Inside his floor in Stark Tower, crews are setting up.**

[clip of film crew setting up equipment]

**Rogers is waiting.**

[Camera view changes to Steve Rogers standing by a set of elevator doors] 

****This is the first time we’ve ever met.** **

[camera focuses on Steve Rogers greeting Diane Sawyer, giving her a hug in greeting] 

_How are you doing, ma’am?_

****He’s 6’ 2” tall, welcoming, and apprehensive.** **

_It’s going to be an emotional rollercoaster, but somehow I’m gonna get through. Come into my house!_

Yes. 

_I would like to say I didn’t know you were coming,_ [Diane laughs as Rogers gestures to the camera equipment and crew], _but you had a few people show up before me._

Surprise! 

[another scene of crew prepping] 

**As we sit down, the person whose face has changed so much over recent years is quiet, knowing the moment that carries you forward can also mean no way back.**

Are you ready? 

_Diane, let’s do it._

Deep breath? 

_You know what? I’m …_ [Rogers pauses, swallows visibly.] _It’s gonna be tough. I’ve been thinking about this day forever, and, uh, what I should do with my life, especially since I’ve been given this second chance and all. How do I tell my story, my …? How do I tell people … what I’ve been through?_ [tears are visible in Rogers’ eyes.] _Um … and that day is today and I got to choose it._

[Diane hands him a tissue] 

_Yeah, it’s going to be kinda tough but today’s the day. Obviously I’ve been honest with the Avengers, everybody involved. They’re pretty much my family. It’s been really tough. But here I am. That’s the good news. Anyway._ [Rogers dabs at his eyes with the tissue] _Okay, where do we start?_ [laughing] _One thing that’s so important through this whole process, okay?_

What? 

_Is we have to keep our sense of humor about this, okay? It’s, honestly, it’s really pretty funny. Me, of all people, okay? Steve Rogers, you know? Has to deal with these issues. Um, I literally ran away and joined the Army to get away from all of this stuff._

**An irony, and an answer.**

So Steve Rogers is …? 

[Sigh] _Steve Rogers is, um, I would say I’ve always been very confused with my gender identity since I was this big._ [Rogers makes a gesture about knee high.] _I’ve tried to explain it, as I’ve had all my teammates and friends sitting in that chair, tried to explain it to them this way. Um. God’s looking down, making little Steve. Really little Steve._ [Rogers laughs.] _Okay. He’s looking down and he says okay, what are we gonna do with this one? Make him a smart kid. Very determined. He gave me all these wonderful qualities. And at the end when he’s just finishing, he goes “Wait a sec! We gotta give him something. Everyone has stuff in their life they have to deal with, you know. What are we gonna give him?” God looks down and chuckles a little bit and goes, “You know, hey, let’s give him some health stuff. Sure. Oh, and while we’re at it, let’s give him the soul of a female, and see how he deals with that.” You know? So I am stuck, and I hate the word, you know, girl stuck in a guy’s body, I hate that terminology._

Why? 

_I’m me. I’m me. I’m a person, and this is who I am. I’m not stuck in anybody’s body, it’s just who I am, as a human being. My brain is much more female than it is male. It’s hard for people to understand that, but that’s what my soul is. Um … I look at it this way. Steve always telling a lie. He’s telling a lie his whole life, who he is. And, um, I can’t do that any longer. So can I take my ponytail out? Yeah, why not. We’re talking about all this stuff. Yeah, let’s take the damn ponytail out._

[Rogers pulls the band from his hair, shakes it out] 

**A symbolic moment, after twenty some years (or should we say ninety-some?) In a sense, we start again.**

Are you a woman? 

_Um … yes. For all intents and purposes I am a woman. People look at me differently, uh, but they you as this macho male, this ultimate man, but in my heart and soul, everything that I do in life, it is part of me. That female side, it’s part of me. It’s who I am. I was not genetically born that way. Um … as of now I have all the male parts and all that kind of stuff, so in a lot of ways we’re different, okay, um, but we still identify as female. And that’s very hard for Steve Rogers to say. Cause why? I don’t want to disappoint people._

[cut to more war footage] 

**Those hundreds of thousands of people who once cheered a real life American war hero. World War II, 1942. He was accepted into Project Rebirth, undergoing a transformation, becoming an inspiration. Strength, stamina, daring, intelligence, bravery. There he was, fighting for all. In the end, he sacrificed himself to save millions, and his loss was mourned. And then, not lost after all, and returned to us, fighting for us all again as the alien Chitauri invaded.**

You were the world’s … 

_World’s greatest soldier._

We see the form. [Diane holds up a picture of Rogers in his Captain America uniform] 

_Yeah._

You see the, what? 

_A confused person at that time, running away from my life, running away from who I was._

With fear? 

_Big time fear, yeah. Yeah. Um … scared to death. Didn’t know what my future held at that time._

Help everybody struggling with what this is? [Diane holds up a picture of Rogers from WWII] 

_That is me. That is her._

And people have to know that you can want to identify as a woman and still 

_Kick butt._ [Rogers laughs] 

**We told him there’s a lot of skepticism among people watching tonight, people who are convinced that this is a stunt to take media attention away from the scandal surrounding S.H.I.E.L.D. and the Avengers’ involvement with that troubled agency.**

_Oh, no, we would never do that, Diane. Besides, that’s what we have Stark for._ [Rogers and Diane both laugh] _Are you telling me I’m going to go through complete gender change, okay, and go through everything you need to do that for some media diversion? Really, Diane, it ain’t happening. Okay, yeah, we’re doing this for good publicity. Good publicity? Yeah, right. Diane, do you have any idea what I’ve been going through in my life, and they’re going to say I’m doing it for publicity purposes? Oh my god. There’s lots of government scandals out there. Next year’s Presidential race will have that in spades._

Yes, but there’s a shameless selling of everything these days. 

_And I get that. I’ve seen the action figures. But what I’m doing is going to do some good, and we’re going to change the world. I really firmly believe that the work is going to make a difference in the world, what we’re doing. And if the whole S.H.I.E.L.D. thing gave me that foothold, then some good will have come out of it. I’m not saying this makes any of that right, by any means, but it is letting me do some good. Understand?_

**And he says his story tonight is just one of many. An estimated 700,000 transgender all around us. People of powerful talent but also vulnerability. Suicide, murder, discrimination, homelessness, ridicule. Rogers says he can’t speak for all of them. He just hopes his decision to come forward will help.**

The period in which you were treated as a joke was getting you ready to be …? 

_My whole life has been getting me ready for this. It’s not just the last few months, as they’ve been treating me as a joke. My whole life has been preparing me for this moment. So I want to take advantage of it, and I want to do the right thing, and be true to myself._

**This is the last TV interview he will do as Steve. His dream: to re-emerge as the person he calls “her.”**

So you can re-emerge … 

_As myself. How simple is that? Isn’t that great?_ [Rogers smiles] _Yeah. Yeah._

**Why now?**

_Why now? I just can’t pull the curtain any longer. This is a new time, and things are changing, and I hope I’m helping change them for the better. And I just can’t … Steve is a lie. “She” is not a lie. I can’t do it anymore._

**And when we come back, the first time a little boy does something different, and has no idea why.**


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't know how long I spent researching high schools in Brooklyn that were around in the 1930s and are still around today, but finally I threw up my hands in the air and just picked one. There's a lot more divergence from the Sawyer/Jenner interview in this as well. Hope it works!
> 
>  **Reminder:** Using the male pronouns for Caitlyn/Stephanie here because they were used in the interview. Voiceovers from Diane Sawyer are in bold text. Regular text are questions from Diane Sawyer during the interview. Steve Rogers’ responses are in italics. I think you can figure out the brackets.

[shots of a residential neighborhood, flashes to a sign that says “Montague Street” and back]

_Right down there – that’s Boys High School. Well, Boys’ and Girls’ High School now._

**This is the first time since awakening that Steve Rogers is returning to the place he says the story began. Brooklyn, New York.**

[The camera pans down a rundown alley]

_This is the first alley I got beat up in. It was in 1931. I hadn’t learned to keep my fists up yet._

**Dad died from pneumonia in 1926, when he was still a child. Mom worked double shifts at a garment factory afterwards, and took in laundry on the side to help make ends meet. His closest friend, almost a brother, was James Buchanan Barnes, or Bucky. Steve’s mother took them to church on Sunday. The Rogers’ little boy was sickly, suffering from asthma, scoliosis, arrhythmia, and anemia, as well as several other conditions. No one knew that when Steve was about eight or nine years old he felt a deep yearning to do something he had never even heard about before. He wanted to put on a dress.**

[Fade back to shot of Steve Rogers in a car]

Your mother’s closet?

_Yes. My mom’s._

Do you remember the dress?

_No, except I put it on and I marked the closet so when I put it back, I could put it back, all back, everything in the exact same spot so I wouldn’t get caught. And at that time I didn’t know why I was doing it, besides it just made me feel good._

[Cut to Rogers and Diane getting out of the car on a snowy street. Rogers holds the door for her and offers her his hand]

_Watch your step, ma’am_

[They survey the street]

So which one was it?

_Well, the original building isn’t here anymore. But that’s where it stood_

[Rogers points to a brick building. The tenement that he and James Barnes lived in was torn down in the 1950s and this complex took its place.]

 _Our old place would have been right about … there_

[Rogers points to a corner, four floors up]

_The light in the afternoons was perfect for drawing_

**It’s not the same set of stairs, but it’s still the same place where a little boy first walked a bewildering and frightening path. His mother wasn’t home, so in a dress, he sneaks out, covering his short boyish hair**

_I would put a scarf over my head, ‘cause my hair was short, and I didn’t know, well, I can’t do that._

You have no idea what you’re feeling?

_You have no idea. No idea. You don’t know what’s up. Okay? And there’s no place to get any information._

**Remember, it’s the 1930s. Not just no internet. No one to ask what’s happening. But he says even as a small boy, continuing to slip out in his mother’s dress and scarves, he has a growing certainty that for some reason, the gender of his body is different from the gender he feels in his soul.**

A lonely little boy?

 _Very lonely little boy. I’m still a lonely big boy, in a way._ [Rogers laughs] _I don’t socialize a lot. Okay, I’m not an outgoing person._ [Diane hands him another tissue] _Thank you._ [he dabs at his eyes] _I’ve never fit in. When you deal with this issue, you don’t fit in. I like to run but 99.9% of the time I run by myself. I look at guys and I go ‘He’s comfortable in his skin,’ and I think wouldn’t that be a nice way to go through life? I look at women all the time, thinking ‘Oh my god, how lucky are they that they can wake up in the morning and be themselves.' But me? I’m stuck here in the middle. And I've got nowhere to go. Which way do I go?_

**By adolescence, he says it has become a daily turmoil. But the doubt and fear about his gender doesn’t change his sexual orientation, his very real attraction to both sexes.**

_And that was another thing. I never was just attracted to the girls. My sexuality just compounded what my issues were._

**We’ll ask more about this later tonight. He’s in trouble constantly throughout high school, allowing his strong sense of honor to pull him constantly into fights he cannot win. He drew illustrations for the school newspaper, and initially enrolled in art school after graduation. With the death of his mother in 1940, he withdrew from school and began a series of odd jobs to support himself. His physical limitations made it hard for him to take any kinds of employment that would prove his masculine gender to himself.**

_There was just a lot of determination, you know, a kind of obsession in what I was trying to do._

Blocking, blocking…

_Blocking these feelings out of my life, so I didn’t have to deal with me_

**So during those blocked up years, did he sometimes still feel compelled to go out dressed as a woman?**

_I mean, with my mother gone, and all her things gone, I didn’t have access anymore to her clothes, her things, and I had to put that away. ___

But you did some dressing? 

_A little bit._

**It was harder, though. Much harder. By this point, James Barnes and he were sharing an apartment, and as close as they were, this was something he felt he couldn’t share with his best friend. Together they scrimped and saved, barely making ends meet at the end of the Great Depression. Competition for work was fierce. Barnes worked at the docks, backbreaking manual labor that in the end made him a prime candidate for enlistment when World War II began. Rogers buried himself in whatever work came his way, postponing the day he has to face what was happening on those stairs back in Brooklyn, when a little boy, unaware there were thousands of other children just like him, ventured out all alone so many years ago. Next, how his life was changed, but how some things stayed the same.**

[Another montage of World War II clips – Hitler giving a speech, tanks rolling, panned shot of soldiers in uniform standing at attention.] 

**Project Rebirth. That was the name given to Doctor Abraham Erskine’s attempt to create the supersoldier serum. He was looking for someone different. Someone whose interior might not match his exterior. He found that in Steve Rogers.**

_I don’t really know why I kept trying to enlist. Even before the first time I knew they’d turn me down, because of my size, my health. But I kept trying. They say third time’s the charm, but it took four for me. That’s when I met Dr. Erskine, when he offered me a chance. And I jumped for it._

**That’s how Steve Rogers, now 21 years old, went from the skinny asthmatic to the man here before me today. Erskine’s serum performed over and above expectations, and Rogers went from five feet tall and a hundred and ten pounds to six foot two, two hundred and twenty five.**

_It was amazing. It was frightening, too. Everything was so much … more. Nothing was where it was supposed to be. I was reaching down for everything instead of up._ [Rogers laughs] _I broke a lot of doors. Just ripped them right off their hinges. It took me a bit to adjust._

**Project Rebirth died that day, however, with the death of Dr. Erskine at the hands of a Hydra infiltrator. And Rogers found himself again facing that part of him that he’d tried to block. The project was disbanded, deemed a failure, and instead of being sent to the front, Rogers was recruited for a different kind of mission.**

_So there I was, on tour, with all these showgirls. And I’m surrounded by them, all the time. We’re on the road together, on buses and trains, and I’m right in the middle of them, and they’re talking about hair and makeup and wearing dresses and stockings and heels, and for shows there’s someone putting makeup on me and they gave me this outfit to wear, and it was ridiculous. Really ridiculous. It had these tiny little blue shorts, and matching blue tights. And from the front I’m all manly, with these muscles and this chiseled jaw, but if I turned, if I stood just right when I looked in the mirror, when I was wearing those tights, well … I realized that while part of my life was over, I had so many other issues to deal with in my life, and I had this realization of “Oh, my god. What do I do now?”_

[Montage of old show posters and publicity photos, all of “Captain America”] 

**With this tour comes a whirlwind of sudden fame. Newspapers compare him to the Statue of David, and he becomes the face of war bonds.**

[Diane holds up an old poster and Rogers laughs.] 

_Good old war bonds. Yes. I guess I’m proud of that. I was doing something, at least._

**But he’s still shy. News reels reported on his new status as a heartthrob, and speculated on his apparent lack of a sweetheart. Which brings us to Peggy Carter, who he’d met at Camp Lehigh.**

**Author's Note:**

> Feel free to come say hi over on [tumblr](http://thewightknight.tumblr.com/).


End file.
